


Coming home

by Dominatrix



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Drama, Gen, Hurt, Post-Reichenbach, Suicide Attempt, TW: Suicide, former drug use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dominatrix/pseuds/Dominatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has taken Sherlock three years to enable him to come back after his fall. When he finally returns to Baker Street, everything is different.<br/>John has forgotten him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three years

**Author's Note:**

> You can find the playlist that accompanies the fanfic here:  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9tkKDbQVLg&list=PL3QMU5nHZ0WXCmslx4oE6dxDA47Aj7Dfz

He had been away for far too long. Three years. Three seemingly endless years. Every day seemed to last forever, and he had died a thousand times before the sun had set. It became harder to get up in the morning when he could not sleep at night. The thought of his home had never left him. He had thought about the yellow smiley on the wall while he drove on the highway to Nebraska in an old, rattly hire car.

He had missed the unsteady kitchen table while a grim-looking official was checking his fake passport before he let him pass through the gates.

He had read the obituary with a bitter taste in his mouth. Ever since, he kept asking himself whether Mrs. Hudson had still remembered what she had been for him during the final stages of her illness.

He had wondered if dust would cover his violin, or if it would still be as shiny and flawless as on the day he had left the flat in Baker Street. In complete awareness that he might never come back again.

He had been on this journey to end this problem, this final problem, as good as possible.

Moriarty had not survived their final problem. Sherlock could not say that he was sorry for that. He had asked himself many times what could drive a man so deep into obsession. Then he had noticed that maybe he had been only one false decision away from becoming Moriarty.

He had seen everything in America that would have been worth the journey. He had inhaled the dry desert air in Death Valley and had felt the hot blazing sun of Chicago in July on his face. He had spent the worst snow storm in Alabama’s history in a cheap motel room while the collage he created became bigger and more and more branched. Moriarty seemed to have friends – well, at least allies – everywhere. The longer he searched the deeper he got into the actions of his former arch enemy.

Sherlock had seen things that would have appeared fascinating to others. He had watched the seemingly endless ice deserts in the highest north of Alaska, with the same lack of interest that he watched the British Army Browning L9A1 which lay under his pillow at night and which he always carried close to his body at daytime. He had travelled through Georgia, searching for a single name on a list which never seemed to end. Others would have stopped in disbelief when they watched the untamed beauty of the nature next to the streets.

But nothing could impress him. Nothing could have enthused him as much as a single word, a call, a single life sign, a proof that John had not forgotten him. Mycroft had ensured him that he was fine. But when did his brother ever tell the truth?

He had done many things he would like to forget. He was aware that it was morally questionable to ruin other lives only to save his own. Sherlock hoped to protect another one with it. Even if he wasn’t sure whether John still thought about him. He wished it more than anything else.

John was the only reason why Sherlock did all this. He was the reason why Sherlock actually managed to get up in the morning although it caused him nausea to fasten the weapon at his hip and to put the fake ID card in his suit pocket. He had never been a blood-thirsty or brutal man. He would have done everything just to wake up in the morning and to breathe in that familiar scent which showed him that he was finally back where he belonged. To be exact he did everything. Everything a man could ever endure, and much more.

And now he was back. The list was burned, all traces eliminated. He was safe. John was finally safe again.

Baker Street did not look much different than she used to look, but for Sherlock it was the most exciting look in a long time. With slow steps he walked along the street and could remember every bump on the old bouldering. John had cursed it often enough when he had been lost in his thoughts again and had spread all their groceries over the whole pavement.

When Sherlock stood in front of the door with the gold letters he did not hesitate a splinter second. He had waited three years. Those were three years too much. He pressed the door bell and waited for the noise of steps that came closer.

The door opened, and Sherlock could finally see the face he had missed for so long.

“I’m home again, John.”

The man in front of him frowned and replied Sherlock’s gaze with a cautious expression in his eyes.

“Do I know you?”

 


	2. All lost

Sherlock tried to force himself to smile. It was a horribly bad joke of John. Not that Sherlock didn’t deserve it, after three years in which John had thought that his best friend was dead. But it wasn’t like John to face Sherlock with such morbid humour. Not with such a straight face. Something was not right. Not at all.

„John. I can understand that you are angry, but believe me when I say that it was absolutely necessary for your safety. I would have never made this step if I wasn’t completely sure that it was the best for you.” Sherlock was extremely surprised how calm John reacted about his return. Almost _too_ calm. There was something in Sherlock’s mind which hinted at the truth, but Sherlock couldn’t – and didn’t want to – accept it.

This option was absolutely impossible.

But whenever you eliminated all possible solutions, whatever remained, how crazy it might sound, had to be the truth.

“You have no idea who I am.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. Maybe you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I’m definitely not the man you are searching for.“

Another voice came out of the flat. The voice of a woman who came closer. Due to the speed and the smoothness of her steps Sherlock could assess that she was a slim woman in her early or mid thirties. “John? Who’s at the door? Is it Cathleen? ”

Sherlock analysed the situation in the moment the reddish-blonde woman appeared in the doorway. She was standing diagonally behind John, one hand laid on his lower arm as if she was ready to pull him back in the next second if he might get into danger. Doubtlessly she had deep feelings for him. The way John’s forehead smoothed, how his whole bearing seemed to become softer, allowed Sherlock to deduce that John replied these feelings. This – and the ring on the woman’s finger – left only one conclusion.

“You got married, John.”

“John, don’t you want to introduce us?” the woman asked and softly nudged her husband. John seemed to be completely perplex.

“I don’t know this man, Mary. I have never seen him before.”

Sherlock didn’t know what to say. He stared at the woman helplessly.

“Please clear up some things for me. Why doesn’t he notice me?”

„When have you seen John the last time?“

The green eyes of the woman were kind and loving. She was the person other people would call “a good person”. She was a single child but had always wanted a younger sister. When she had been five years old she had burned her hands when grabbing a hot tea cup. Since then she avoided everything that was connected to heat. She almost had a phobia to everything that fumed.

„Three years ago.” Sherlock couldn’t avoid that his voice sounded full of pain, but he swallowed the suffocating feeling in his throat and ignored the anguish of the last three years. He had to look at this matter-of-fact. But it was so hard for him to do so when the only thing that had kept him alive for three years stood right in front of him and didn’t recognize him.

The facial expression of Mary shifted to a mirror picture of Sherlock’s mimic; a horrid mixture of grief, regret and pain.

“This explains a lot” she replied lowly, and suddenly it seemed to be very hard for her to look at Sherlock’s face. Her face was pale and grey, and her hand was clenched in John’s lower arm as if she had to remember that he was still there.

“John had a car accident two years ago. He remembers nothing that has happened before this accident.”

 


	3. Sir Boast-a-lot

For a moment it was deafeningly silent.  
All Sherlock heard was the rush of his own blood in his head.  
But it wasn't the inner noise that clouded his mind and that let black glowing fogs lighten up in front of his eyes. It wasn't this terrible sound of a too-fast beating heart that made him tremble for a short moment so he had to steady himself on the doorway of his former home.

It were the feelings.  
All the feelings of the last years crushed down on him. Not only the guilt and the desperation of the last three years in which he had been alone, in a way no one had ever experienced. His former loneliness caught up on him. The sort of loneliness that had driven him into the treacherous and comforting embrace of the drugs. The sort of loneliness he had felt before he had met John.  
But this time it had been worse.  
This time he had felt true worry for someone else for the first time, because he knew that there was someone out there who mourned him. He knew that it was of no importance at all how bad he was feeling. John would be worse. No matter how horrible the thought about his former life was. For John, it would be worse. This knowledge hurt more than anything else.

He still missed him like hell, even after three years. In him he had found a man who stayed with him. Although he was different, although no one except from him would willingly spend more time with Sherlock than absolutely necessary. He had been his best friend, like the brother he had never had. And so much more.

The last three years had showed Sherlock what he felt for John. He had felt miserable every single one of these days when he woke up because something was missing. Because someone was missing he couldn't possibly survive without. But he made him, he lived through those days. In the solid knowledge that it would be the best for John. He had done things he would have never thought of himself. All just to be sure that John could live somewhere without getting hurt.

Sherlock had always known that the possibility was there that John would have a family if Sherlock was ever to return.  
He had always known that the possibility was there that John would hate him for what he had done to him.  
And he had known, that he would have deserved it.  
He had forced himself to think about the possibility that John wouldn't want to let him back in his life. Sherlock had even thought about failing. That John could be dead when he came back. And that it would have been his fault.  
Guilt. This feeling had become a part of Sherlock at some time, until he couldn't remember where his own soul ended and his doubtful and fear-bothered mind began.

He knew in this moment, in which he had to force himself into every single breath, only enough oxygen in his lungs not to faint, what would have been worse: Finding John dead or finding John...like _this _.__ It went against his own nature to accept the situation the way it was. It just couldn't be possible that their joint story ended like this. Not after all this pain.

Ironically, Moriarty's words came up in his head again, whispering, and he remembered the story about Sir Boast-a-lot.

_Sir Boast-a-lot had done much for his best friend, more than he would have ever done for anybody else. More than he would have done for himself. He had tried to protect him without knowing if he would ever come back home._   
_But when Sir Boast-a-lot finally returned home after all those wars he had to admit to himself that he had been gone for too long. Things had changed. Sir Boast-a-lot was beside himself with sadness and fury. He didn't want to understand why his best friend had forgotten him. But eventually, after a long, long time, even he finally saw that he didn't have a place in his best friend's life any longer. So Sir Boast-a-lot decided to disappear from his life. He promised himself never to return home again, to not even get near it, because he couldn't bear seeing his best friend without him noticing him._

_And he lived unhappy and alone to the end of his days._


	4. Not complete anymore

A touch on his forearm ripped him back into reailty.

„Would you like to sit down for a while? You look like you just saw a ghost.“ Mary's voice was quiet, appeasing, as if she would handle a wild beast. And maybe that's what Sherlock was. He didn't feel quite human right now. It had happened a few times since his fall, that he got lost in his mind palace and couldn't get back to the surface on his own. But it had never been so bad.

„How long was I...gone?“

„Four or five minutes. I asked John to lie down a bit. It is stirring for him.“ Sherlock was able to bite back a comment because of two reasons:

1\. This Mary had not a single clue who he was. Who he used to be. Even more specific. Who he had used to be for John. And Sherlock thought of it as clever – at least for now – to leave her with her lack of knowledge. She couldn't know what really weighed on Sherlock, why he really felt as if he had seen a ghost. Because John had transformed into one in a few seconds. This lack of emotion in his eyes when he had looked at him, this polite indifference. Mary didn't need to know what it did to Sherlock. It wasn't much of her business.

2\. He knew that no matter what he could say about John, or her, or himself...It would hurt him far more than her.

Sherlock followed the petite woman into the house with a feeling that could be described as numbness in the best case. Tenthousand indicators jumped at him, wanted him to concentrate his mind on them, to deduce them. But he knew that there wouldn't be much. Nothing he didn't know yet. Mary had been a kindergarten teacher once, but she had abandoned the job. On short notice. Probably someting had happened to one of her protégés, and she had felt reponsible for that. Now she was a nurse at St. Bart's. It didn't need a brillant mind to guess how John and Mary had met.

„Please have a sit, Mr...“ She wanted to call him by name and noticed that she didn't know one. Sherlock knew that she waited for him to tell her. But he had no desire whatsoever to do that. The longer she didn't know who he was the longer she would be able to speak openly. He sat down on one of the dark blue sofas. His eyes didn't leave Mary's figure for not even a second.

„I am terribly sorry that you have to get to know about John in this way. You sure had a long journey.“

„Yes, I really had.“ Three years were long enough. „A...horrible thing.“

„Horrible, really. I can't imagine what I would do if I couldn't remember anything, anything at all. Say...Have you been a good friend of John's?“

Sherlock cleared his throat and smoothed his dark grey suit trousers. „He was my best friend. I don't know how he...thought about that.“

Yes, he did. And just a fast reaction had kept him from saying to say „how he felt“. It was an expression that would imply more that had been there.

„Oh“, Mary replied lowly and turned back to Sherlock. She carried a tablet our of light-coloured wood with roses printed on it, on top of it a pot, two mugs and two small bowls. Milk and sugar.

„I am sorry.“

„Me too.“

Sherlock didn't pretend anything; he knew that he had to look terrible. Well, how a man looked after he had waited for something for three years that wasn't there any more. No. It was still there, but it was not complete anymore.

 


	5. His heart

Mary sank down on the sofa opposite to Sherlock.

„A sad story. He was completely lost when I met him for the first time. Of course I read his backstory. You would think that people could only handle a certain amount of pain before they break. The doctors at St. Bart's think that the amnesia is a trick of John's subconsciousness to protect him. Apparently he was crushed after the death of his colleague.“

Sherlock had to bite his tongue to stop himself from correcting her. _Friend, not colleague. Best friend._

„And then, when Harry died, too...“

„Harry? His sister?“

„Yes. She only died a few months after John's colleague. Officially it was because of hert failure, but everybody knows that it was jut more alcohol than her body could stand. Oh god.“

Mary clapped her hands in front of her mouth and stared at Sherlock. Her big, honest eye were filled with horror and guilt.

„I think I shouldn't even tell you this. But...To speak someone who knew John before his accident...I think I miss the contact with other people.“

„It's fine with me. I knew that Harry had problems with drinking. But I thought she could make it.“

Mary cleared her throat and watched Sherlock for a moment, as if she would have to assess if she could really carry on talking. In the end she decided she could.

„Well, it seemed to be like it. But after John fell into this hole, when his colleague...What was his name...Hokes or something like that.“

A hesitating smile widened on her lips. It died fast when Sherlock didn't reply it. He was too tired to put on more of a show than especially necessary.

„He couldn't be there for her anymore. She was terribly lonely.“

Sherlock noticed that Mary probably felt responsible for every single person in the universe. He could understand why John had married her. Although he wasn't quite sure if the present John was anything alike the John he once used to know. Could he be? When everything that had branded, that had made him the man he used to be...When all that was simply forgotten?

What was it like for a grown man to wake up without memory, starting a new life? It seemed rather appealing in the situation in which Sherlock found himself right now. To forget all the pain sounded like a good solution. But he knew where it could lead. Where it had lead him once already.

He had sat on the wrong side in the interrogation room and had to suffer through Lestrade's bad questions about drug owning. That was the way they had met, eventhough Sherlock believed that Lestrade had never forgiven him. He had never forgiven him for speaking out loud about the affair – affairs, to be exact – his wife had.

„Who would have thought that so much misfortune can happen to a family? First the daughter, then the son. Terrible. I can't believe something like this actually happened.“

Oh, Sherlock could only believe it too well. He was aware that he was one of the persons that were closest to the disaster.

Simultaneously, however, he saw himself from the outside, with his usual, cool mind.

_He is desperate. He doesn't know what he should do. He lost his last fixed point. From now on it is all indifferent, and he knows that, but he doesn't want to see it. Why? Because the truth is too hard to handle? How can a man who loves the truth so much that he made a profession out of uncovering the truth....How can he lie to himself? Because it is something different now, isn't it? This is about himself. His other half._

Sherlock had always been the mind. It had taken him some time until he had understood that John was not only a friend, but a part of him, a part he had missed.

He was his conscience, his heart.

He had always appreciated him, but now it painfully sank in that there were far too many things he hadn't said because he thought he still had time.


	6. No ordinary accident

„But it wasn't an ordinary accident. Coffee?“

„Black. Two sugars“ Sherlock mumbled as he took the fragile-looking porcelain cup from the just as fragile-looking hands of the woman opposite to him.

He allowed himself a short moment of peace in which he only basked in the warm thought that John was alive, that he didn't hate him – he preferred not to remind himself that John didn't remember anything at all – before he crossed the silence, with a deceivingly static and calm voice.

„What do you want to say with this: Not an ordinary accident?“

He said it casually, as if it was a question of politeness and no essential truth he had to know to understand why the things were the way they were.

„John was unbelievably fast in his car, but as a former soldier...His reflexes would have been fast enough to brake before the impact. If he would have tried. There were no skid marks or any kind of indication that he suddenly lost control over the vehicle. Ironically, it happened in front of a hospital. The St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Or St. Bart's, as most people call it. You know it, don't you?“

„Heard of it“ Sherlock replied. Again memories rose up in his mind.

_„Afghanistan or Iraq?“ Harry's phone. Mike Stamford. A meeting that should change both of their lives._

Sherlock’s thoughts rushed forward, completely restless.

_A soldier. He didn't want to show weakness, but Sherlock saw it in his eyes, in his movements, even though John took care in hiding it._

His mind didn't give him a break, it just went on, always.

 _The cane that suddenly just stood in the corner next to the fireplace, naturally. The great game. A short, terrifying thought._ John is Moriarty. He played with you, all tis time. _Relief, followed by fear. Surviving, just so close to failing._

Had Sherlock believed that this really could have been the worst? At least he had hoper it .He had been wrong.

_„Molly, I think I'm going to die.“_

_Fear. For the first time he experienced true agony. What would happen to him? Much more important. What would happen to John? Wasn't his life so much more easier when he hadn't felt a thing?“ It made it all so much more complicate._

_„You machine!“_

_Repentance. Already repentance about what would happen later. Repentance about the things he had wanted to say but never spoken out loud._

_„Come and play.“_

_The roof. Their final problem. Moriarty's death. A hard decision that was easy to make. His last call. A lie that tasted all too much like a truth. John's voice screaming his name, with immovable desperation, as if his voice alone could attenuate the clash._

_Silence._

_Emptiness._

_Pain. So much pain._

Yes, he knew St. Bart's only too well.

It was too much of a coincidence. And Sherlock didn't believe in coincidences. It was obvious what had happened, but Sherlock was reluctant to see the truth. Anyway. He had to know. There was no way around the truth, even if he had never wished more that there was one.

The words tumbled from his lips all on their own, and Sherlock knew it. He knew that the answer would destroy it. But it was too late now. It had been too late for over three years. Now nothing could be repaired any more.

„And you mean that...“

His voice hung in the air between them like a horrid reek, hideous. It was hard to keep calm, to keep seated, while he watched Mary's hands clutch each other. She was seeking shelter. Shelter from what she knew. From what Sherlock knew too, basically. However, he still had hope, a last spark of nearly lifeless hope. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he could be wrong. He wished so much to be wrong.

But a single glance into Mary's eyes was enough to ensure him that he was on no account wrong. He knew that her hesitation partly was the fault of the pain she still encountered when she had to speak it out loud. Partly because of her doubt if she could give such an information to a man she had only known for half an hour. In the end something in Sherlock's face seemed to convince her.

Maybe because that, what she saw, reminded her of her own face in the mirror, after a nightmare-ridden night.

Her voice was almost inaudible. A whisper into the emptiness that was Sherlock’s past with John.

„I mean that it wasn't an accident. John has tried to kill himself.“


	7. Failed

The hole that existed inside of Sherlock, the hole that had destroyed everything, that had almost destroyed him too, until John had filled it with his mere existence, the hole that was only held together during his faked death because of the fact that John was safe, that it was better that way, that this was the only possibility it could ever work...This hole of which Sherlock had been afraid his whole life, broke open. It drowned him from the inside with all the pain he had endured for John, he had lived through, knowing that John was finde, wherever he was.

He would have never believed that John would manage to still be in London. He had guessed that every stone on the streets, every breeze that haunted the early mornings, every falling leaf that found its peace in Hyde Park, would make John remember.

Mycroft had assured him that John still lived in London. Not in the flat, though, apparently he had moved after Mrs. Hudson's death.

But he had told him that he was alright.

„For heaven's sake, Sherlock. Almost three years have passed, and you still write me these sorrowful SMS. John lives his life. He...gets along. I would tell you if something was wrong.“

Sherlock had often been disappointed, used and lied to by his brother.

But nothing – not the discussion after their sister's death who had to bear the guilt, not the fight about Irene Adler's fate, not even the fact that Mycroft had never issued a single word about his role in the whole catastrophe – was worse than this treachery.

„Could I use your bathroom?“ he squeezed out breathlessly. Mary nodded but rose with him.

„Should I accompany you to the door?“ Sherlock would have smiled coolly under different circumstances, knowing that it was oh so obvious. Mary would worry about her worst enemy if he was about to die, would mourn him like a loved one. Would she still be so kind to Sherlock if she would know who he really was? That he had eventually been the one that made John the man he was now, and especially the man he wasn't any more?

One could call it merciless overestimation of his his influence on John, but Sherlock actually knew exactly that he played too major a mole in John's suicide attempt to just sort it down as a tragedy.

He felt guilty.

The guilt nearly devoured him from the inside, mashed up with the fury, and sadness, and emptiness, with the hole that John had left behind inside of him, and flooded his mind palace with corrosive acid until Sherlock wasn't sure how to spell his name anymore.

He refused the touch of Mary's tender, fragile hands, identified her as a passionate violinist – with great effort – and stumbled along the corridor. He didn't need her guidance. He had lived here before. Why had John moved back here? Or had Mycroft lied about that one thing too?

In the bathroom he let himself sink down on the edge of the tub and buried his head in his hands. He had forbidden himself to ever show feelings for years now, just letting them happen was far too dangerous. In this painful moment he remembered it, not sure if the Sherlock he had been before John had come crashing down into his life like a meteor made of white light...If he hadn't been right.

It drained all air out of his lungs, and his heart was only driven by the agonising whisper of Mary's tender voice.

_ I mean that it wasn't an accident. _ The shallow breath which he used to force oxygen into his body was hard. What did it matter? What sense did it make to keep on breathing, keep on existing, when there was no one left he could return to? What was the deeper sense of a reality in which everything he believed in had collapsed into icy ash?

He had tried to protect John.

He had failed.

 


	8. Too late

His hands trembled as he reached into his coat pocket.

He had never thrown the coat away, although there had been moments in which he had clenched the now-hated fabric so hard that his knuckles had turned white. In the splinter second in which his fingers closed around the cool metal of his phone, old, but still painful pictures and memories flashed in his head like lightning at a night sky. His hands were trembling just because of fury now, not because of cold and fear like they had the day his life had ended.

Of course Sherlock remembered every tiny detail: The smell of the air on the roof, the feeling of Moriarty's hand grasping his, in a last moment in which he had really still believed that all could end well. The bang that marked Moriarty leaving this world. Panic rising sourly in his throat. The disbelief in John's eyes when he saw Sherlock standing up there. It was too much, too much that had happened.

It were memories like these that prevented Sherlock from having just one night without nightmares. They were a thousand different pieces of his fall, his way from the high-functioning sociopath, how he had liked to title himself, to a man who sacrificed everything for something he hadn't even been aware he could feel it.

It had been a big sacrifice, but there had been a time in which Sherlock had believed that all the pain he suffered would pay in John being alive.

It was everything that was important in these moments when Sherlock had to pull a bullet out of his own body because there would be too many questions in the hospital.

It was the only thing that mattered when he watched tv and saw how Lestrade went more and more tired and beaten with each press conference. Until one day he didn't see him at all.

Until one day he was replaced by the half-hearted tries of Sally Donovan to hide her „I knew it right from the beginning“-face from the press.

This belief had been the reason for making Sherlock live through this, for years, for this one thought. For the thought that John lived. That he actually managed – in some way that was diclosed from Sherlock’s view – to go on, to look forward.

What would Sherlock have done if he had known that the John he had given himself up for had stopped existing a long time ago?

Without looking at the display Sherlock dialed a number and held his phone to his ear. It took only a few seconds until a cool, almost indifferent voice spoke on the other end of the line. For a moment silence fell which wasn't broken by any of the two men. None of them was ready to do the first step. They both knew that it was too late now to save their relationship in any way. In the end it was Sherlock who gave in first. He should have known. The other had always been the better player.

However, this time, just this single time, he didn't see it as a weakness. In spite of the fury boiling in him his voice was quiet and neutral, almost matter-of-fact. Still, the unspeakable pain of a man who had lost everything could be tasted in the background of each of his words.

He could scream at him, but he knew that it wouldn't make a difference.

It had happened.

And nothing, nobody, not even him, could change that.

„When did you plan on telling me, Mycroft?“

 


	9. Amelia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my headcanon, Amelia looks like Caterina Scorsone.  
> Any other suggestions? :)  
> Love, Liz x

For a seemingly endless period of time nothing was to be heard. Then a deep sigh.

„So you really made it. You came back. Congratulations.“

„Oh, spare me the kindness, Mycroft“ Sherlock hissed. He spat out the name of his brother like a swear word.

„How could you keep it secret from me?“ He was aware that he needed to control his anger so his voice wouldn't grow too loud, too rumbling, or an alarmed, worried Mary would stand in front of the door and ask what was wrong. He had to keep himself under control. But he was fed up of this.

„How could you? How could you do this to me?“

Another sigh tortured Sherlock’s ear, and he would have been able to he would have killed his brother with bare hands right now. He knew that he could. But this chapter of his life was over. Moriarty's net of allies had challenged this skill again, but now Sherlock was done with it. For good.

„It would probably not make sense to ask you to meet me. So we can talk about this like grown-ups.“ Mycroft's voice was tired, and almost, just almost, Sherlock would have believed the obviously acted resignation if he didn't him so well and for so long. Mycroft Holmes used everything and everyone if it brought him somewhere. Whatever the consequences were.

„You know that“ Sherlock replied coldly. „I'm waiting, Mycroft.“

„I don't think that you are ready for the truth, brother mine.“

„Oh, let that be my concern.“ He was tired of all these tactics. He wanted to know.

„Good.“ Another moment the silence plagued Sherlock, and the blood rushing in his ears sounded far too loud and too fast.

„I never told you because I didn't think you would come back.“

Of course Sherlock understand the series of words, he knew what Mycroft wanted to say. But he couldn't grasp the base of this statement.

„What?“

„I thought it would be more...humane to leave you under the impression that John was alright if you shouldn't survive your personal crusade. At least it would give you certainty till the end, that your death was necessary to save John. That it was good the way it was. Don't think I wouldn't know why you chose to go on this suicide mission. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock. I thought you knew that.“

He did. He had known that. He had internalised it after Amelia had died. His older sister had always felt too much. She had suffered, her whole life, because she was punished with such great intelligence that she saw the world the way it truly was: Painful, unfair, inhumane.

In contrast to her brothers she had never learned who to distance herself from the pain. She had refused the armour of ice and had not been able to bear the consequences of this decision. She had seen the battlefield with every second she spent being awake, and had felt that every fight on this world was her own.

Eventually, she had crumbled under the weight of her own guilt, of the guilt she had imagined.

And none of her brothers had been able to save her.

Her death had left a vacuum behind, an empty, dead corner in Sherlock’s soul that could never be filled again. He had tried to forget it, erase its existence. But he hadn't been able to. And he guessed that it was the same with Mycroft. They both tried to hide it under a facade of ice and arrogance but every once in a while the memory of Amelia came back, every time more terrifying than the time before.

Mary reminded Sherlock of her: The same, lightly melancholic facial expression, the same care for people she barely knew.

The same, almost self-destructive commitment to the ones she loved.

„I know it only too well. But it is something else when it comes to John.“

„I am aware of that. And this is why I didn't tell you. It would have destroyed you. I saw no sense in mutilating your picture of him. I wanted you to keep him in rememberance the way he has been for you. Maybe it would have made the pain of your death more bearable if you knew that he was well. I don't say that it was the right decision. But it was the one I made to protect you.“

 


End file.
